Nam June Paik

Video art, composer, perfomance artist and visionary media theorist

Born in South Corea, 1932. Died in 2006

Nam June Paik. Korean-born artist, he was a seminal figure in video art, as well as a composer, performance artist, and visionary media theorist. His video sculptures, installations, performances and single-channel videos encompassed one of the most influential bodies of work in electronic media art. Beginning in the 1950s, Paik’s experimental work in music, performance and video explored the juncture of art, technology, and popular culture. Merging global communications theories with an irreverent Fluxus sensibility and the playful manipulation of electronic technologies, Paik played a pioneering role in the convergence of television, video and art. Paik was born in Seoul, Korea in 1932 and died in 2006. The recipient of numerous awards, he was the subject of many major solo exhibitions and retrospectives, at international venues including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf, Germany, and Tate Liverpool, UK, among many others.